Alt-Tab foot pedal?

I have been thinking about inventing an Alt-Tab foot pedal. For anyone who has an office job, you know what I’m getting at. Alt-Tab is a very important thing to know about in an office setting. For those who don’t know, if you hold down “alt” and then press “tab” on your keyboard, you will flip back to whatever screen/program you were in before. So, for example…and this is a totally random example I’m making up completely off the top of my head: if I’m reading an intensely interesting article about the Packers on usatoday.com at work but someone comes into my office, I’ll scramble to click Alt-Tab so that the person who comes into the office doesn’t see anything about the Packers on my computer screen – they will see the program I was in prior to reading about the Packers, like an Excel spreadsheet or a database or something very work-like-looking.

While I have long been a fan of Alt-Tab, there is one problem with it – sometimes it’s just not very discrete (especially if another Alt-Tabber comes into the office unannounced…we can smell our own). So, I’m proposing that someone who is good at this sort of thing, design an alt-tab foot pedal that would be nicely concealed on the floor under your desk. Having something like this would enable you to simply step on it as someone enters your office, quietly and inconspicously changing the screen on your computer from clear non-work-related reading to complicated work-looking stuff. That way, if you’d like, you could even kick back in your chair and put both arms behind your head as if to say “there is no way I could have just been reading about the Packers…no way…don’t you see how casually I’m sitting with my arms multiple feet from the keyboard…no way…”

4 Responses to “Alt-Tab foot pedal?”

I never hide my incessant sports news reading. I dare someone to say something about it.

I like the idea of this alt-tab… However, I think alt-tab is way less conspicuous than some foot pedal. Imagine having a foot pedal under your desk and having to tap it everytime you have to switch screens off of a sports page. Your office would sound like a Hanes sweat shop.

Have you seen the “work-out dog” usb? Awesome. You plug it in and a lil plastic dog does sit ups off your comp.

I like the idea but I figure that after I hit Alt-Tab if I keep my hands hovering over the keyboard ready to strike and throw a look on my face as if I’m in deep contemplation over the spreadsheet I’m covered. Of course everyone knows that I’m a psycho when it comes to following my beloved Packers and Brewers from down in NC and online is the best resource to get my fix. Its better for the world as a whole to allow me to get my sports fix whenever I can.

Yes, the alt-tab could easily plug into a usb port. But why stop there. A multi-function foot pedal would be the real bomb. You could control and change on your desktop which function you would like the foot pedal to execute when you step on it…it’s got real potential. Call it the Dimmer Switch.